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REVIEW: Rear View : IOU @Brighton Festival

Rear View

IOU Theatre

Brighton Festival

Rear View, is a trip in more than one way, a journey where you spend the entire time looking back, literally and figuratively into the city as it unfurls itself unexpectedly around you and into the life under examination by the single performer of the poetry and story unfolding alongside. A trip in a bus, a trip around the city and also very trippy. But to say there’s only one performer is a fib as IOU that innovative Yorkshire theatre company have enlisted the entirety of Brighton to take part and by embedding the performance in the very real world of Kemp Town, the seafront and even the wretched marina this brings to very vivid life a dreamy reflective journey into what it is to be a person and where our lives take place and unfold.

The event starts at an art class, on a barge in the marina, so far so good, even though it means going to the marina, but the sun is shining, there’s a real sense of excitement in the air, the seagulls whirl around the blue sky and we all dutifully board the barge and allow our adventure to unfold.

I’m not going to say anything more about the content of the show as that would diminish the experience, but it’s clever and interactive and make us feel immediately part of what’s happening, then we are taken out to the next venue which is an open top specially build Double Decker bus with high raked seating, headphones, rather comfortable red seats and some charming Festival folk to make sure we’re all safe and happy before off we go, looking back, heading backwards into the day.

The show then takes place in various places around the city, which blend the backdrop into the very real lives of people, the city is fascinated by the bus, which makes us – the audience – the show for a lot of passers-by who stare and wave at us staring and waving back, a pleasantly surreal experience and the headphones pump out an ultra relaxing ambient soundtrack of soporific electronica and the voice of the performer, her mic also picking up snippets of the background noise and people surrounding her.

A gentleman who was drinking on the seafront bench we had stopped near took a pee out over the prom in full view of all us, as the performance went on before him, and there were a few more moments of the real intersecting with the imagined. The role, which was created by and played by Cecilia Knapp and Jemima Foxtrot – alternating performances depending on the day is simple, a 65-year-old women reflects on key moments in her life, taking us to where they happened.

It’s floaty and tries it’s best to be geographically relevant but I felt it not connected to the city unfolding around it. It’s obviously written to work anywhere, but a few local tweaks to seriously connect it to that street, that seafront bench, that side street and pub would have done wonders for the narrative, but I didn’t really care, I was seduced, floating around on a bus, in bliss, watching the seagulls reel under a bright blue sky (did I mention them…. ) mesmerizing music murmuring on in my ears.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so absorbed by the simple everyday marvelousness of this city by the sea. It’s delightful and we could have spent all day on the bus floating around in the warm comfortable sunshine, music floating and rising and falling in our ears, the seagulls reeling against the blue sky and the city unveiled in unexpected ways.

Brighton looked stunning, the familiar became weird, and the bus offers a novel perspective on the city, it’s inhabitants and just the sheer beauty of a spring day by the seaside.

It was like being in an arty film, where nothing happens in particular but the everyday and ordinary are shot in such vivid HD detail that they become extraordinary, a passing women takes a double look then loops back to stare and take a photo, at us 50 people silently staring back, two lovers outside a pub share a cigarette, a man in an upper story window right next to us holds his Jack Russell up to see, a stoned lady twitches her curtains and looks concerned. Each moment made more vivid with the washing musical soundtrack the interjections of the poetry and the vibrations of the bus itself. This is what immersive theater is all about, transformative, simple and touching. Well-done IOU.

The performance went on, but I’d tripped out, drifting along with the experience, a warm smile on my face, the seagulls reeling amongst a perfect blue sky… and we arrived back to the Marina in a state of bliss. Having had a trip and a half to a half imagined place.

Recommended

For full details of Rear View, click here:

Fringe REVIEW: Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus @Brighton Fringe

Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus “boldly go where no one’s been before” to save the Pink Planet and beat off the nasty Black Hole at St George Church, Kemptown. Where’s the vicar – I say no more!

GAYZ INTO SPACE marked Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus’ (BGMC) ninth consecutive appearance at the Brighton Fringe festival and once again this first class outfit delivered a professional, polished performance with just about something for everyone. I have come to expect nothing less.

The configuration of voices for this show would have benefitted from one or two more first tenors, but with resources stretched with their coming trip to sing in Various Voices in Munich, some singers had to choose between the two events to sing. The four first tenors appearing rose to the challenge magnificently holding their own at times against twelve second tenors.

The programme highlighted all the strengths of this chorus. Moon River perfectly capturing their ability to croon, while Kylie’s Confide in me/Can’t get you out of my head displayed their ability to perform complex arrangements with ease. My personal favourite was Sadao Ueda’s punchy arrangement of Fight Song which showed the chorus off at their very best. This is how a male voice chorus should sound!

Soloists are always a highlight of any BGMC show. Charlie Bedson, John Buckeridge, Rod Edmunds, Adam Betteridge and Nick Ford were certainly up to the challenge. In a lovely secure performance, Adam took on the haunting and beautiful Gravity by Sara Bareilles, a fiendishly difficult number to sing, delivered with sensitivity not only to the music but also the words, while Nick’s performance of Michael Jackson’s Earth Song showed his huge voice, range and technique off to perfection. He was very impressive.

The musical team of Marc Yarrow and Tim Nail along with assistant musical director Joe Paxton consistently maintain this group of musicians at a very high level of performance and they rarely fail to deliver. Production was professional, sound and lighting were spot on as were the pastiche sketches telling the storyline of the show performed by Andrew Farr, Dean Cowlard, Paul Woodcock, Jez Kay, Graeme Clark and John Buckeridge.

You can next hear the Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus perform at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton with the San Francisco Golden Gate Men’s Chorus on Saturday, June 30 at 7.30pm. Ticket cost £35 and include a drink served in the Pavilions Banqueting Hall.

To book tickets, click here:

Fringe REVIEW: FORM @The Hat/Warren

Form

By Rendered Retina

The Hat

Warren

Brighton Fringe

May 5

‘Form’ is a non-verbal, physical and visual journey into the wonderful worlds our minds transport us to when we are bored and we allow it to wander..

If you work in an office and do the dutiful 9-5 then Form is one of those reality altering experiences which will leave your world changed, perhaps in a small way, but you’ll notice vivid imagined ways of escaping appearing behind shelves, alongside desks and perhaps in a single sheet of paper.

The tightly knit chemistry of this trio is apparent and with the well polished and minutely rehearsed routines this is a delight to watch, like a human perpetual motion machine each action triggers the next and the narrative rolls full steam ahead through imaginary landscapes that are vividly recreated.

From simple mime and physical theatre jokes, Rendered Retina grab and run with a passion. From well-known ideas, like a moment of descending imaginary stairs these boys take it to the max giving us descending escalators, travelators, slides and a crescendo of slick and fast choreographed daftness that produced serous mirthful laughter.

For full details of the show, click here:

They explore big themes and the action leads us from a silly playful day-dream out into darker world of adventure, storms, discovery, imprisonment and ultimate resolution. They pull lovely moments out of the endless kinetic motion of their faces and paper props, an impressive tragic moment or two, the suggestion  of real peril and a real sense of struggle both for friendship, control and ultimately meaning.

Tom Mangan, Alex Mangan and Jordan Choi: who are the trio behind Rendered Retina are easy on the eye, with goofy, grunting, gurning engaging expressions to elicit laughter in this wordless production, there’s plenty of other noise as they wrestle, sometimes literally with each other. The audience adored them and left with huge smiles on their faces.

Well done Rendered Retina on giving us an original idea done with style and energy, in a sometimes same samey festival and performance world it’s like a breath of fresh comedic air.

For more info or to book tickets, click here:

Brighton Fringe PREVIEW: Cry, Blueberry at The Warren

After two critically acclaimed, sell-out runs at the Cockpit in London, Richard Canal’s Cry, Blueberry comes to the Brighton Fringe.

POETIC, heartfelt and honest, Cry, Blueberry is a new magical-realist solo play praised with four stars at the Camden Fringe as one “to revere and respect” and “a strong and bold piece of theatre.”

Drawing from his own experiences – and touching upon themes including sex addiction, racial injustice, the accountability of bystanders, the profundity of clowning and the ethics of repentance and forgiveness – Canal’s intimate confessions wipe off the make-up to reveal the face of himself, his persona and the United States’ first decades into the 20th century.

★★★★ “A whole range of human emotion is expressed in a passionate performance (…) this is a brutally honest and sincere confession, and a profound and memorable performance”…. London Theatre

It is November 16, 1932. The Depression is at its greatest, and vaudeville – the roaring heartbeat of the ’20s – has ceased to beat.

Isaac Solomon Loew, a Jewish Mississippian, performs on Broadway as Blueberry, a happy-go-lucky Pierrot. Wrestling with the guilts of times bygone, he frequently flees from his pain not only into performance, but also into sex. His increasingly addictive escapes have finally lost him his wife, at the same times as he loses his employment. He enters his dressing-room for the last time; and as he pours his heart out to the audience, shedding his painted mask, he wrestles with his memories, mistakes and misdeeds – either to their conclusion, or his own.

Richard Canal is a London-based actor and playwright from Spain and the United States. He holds a BA in International Human Rights, and an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development. Aside from Cry, Blueberry, he is currently collaborating on several other solo projects, including one about Salvador Dalí and the other about the Angolan rebel warlord Jonas Savimbi.

Cry, Blueberry is written and performed by Richard Canal and directed by George Goodell.


Event: Cry, Blueberry

Where: The Warren, St Peters Church North, York Pl, Brighton BN1 4GU

When: May 11-13

Time: 7.45pm

Cost: Ticket Price £12/£10.50 (concessions) – £6 for care support workers

To book tickets online, click here:

Or telephone: 01273 987516

 

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